TERRAFORMING TERRA
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A model farm template is imagined as the central methodology. A broad range of timely science news and other topics of interest are commented on.

Friday, August 19, 2011

Antimatter belt surrounds Earth

This is a complete and welcome surprise.It means that it will become possible to actually
collect a lot of such particles for the purpose of doing experiments and
perhaps real world tasks.They are
surely collected continuously from the sun and this supply will turn out to be
highly sustainable.We merely have no
idea of the rate of gain and loss.

It would be rather ironic it
enough were available to provide a cheap energy source for navigation in space
if we actually need it.

I am curious what other surprises
are tucked away in the fine detail of the Van Allen Belt.

A belt of antimatter particles wraps around Earth, despite the huge
amount of matter nearby that would normally annihilate them, scientists have
discovered.

Antiprotons trapped by the Earth's magnetic field were detected by the
PAMELA satellite in a radiation belt several hundred kilometres above the
Earth's surface, according to an article published in the August issue of The
Astrophysical Journal Letters. The PAMELA satellite, launched in 2006, is
designed to study charged particles in cosmic radiation, including antimatter.

Antimatter is made up of "antiparticles" that have the same
mass as corresponding particles of matter, but an opposite charge. For example,
the antimatter counterpart of a positively charged proton is a negatively
charged antiproton.

The trouble with antimatter

Antimatter is produced in equal quantities with matter when energy is
converted into mass — this happens in particle colliders and is believed to
have happened during the Big Bang at the beginning of the universe. That's why
physicists are puzzled about why there is no longer a significant amount of
antimatter in the universe.

But it's very difficult to study antimatter in order to answer such
questions because antimatter and matter are both annihilated the moment they
encounter each other, producing pure energy.

In nature, very little antimatter exists and it rarely stays in
existence for very long. That's because the moment antimatter touches matter,
which makes up most of the universe, both the matter and antimatter are
annihilated, producing pure energy — an efficient process that powers
spacecraft in Star Trek and other works of science fiction.

The newly discovered antiproton belt survives because the Earth's
geomagnetic field acts as a "bottle to stably hold particles, which get
accumulated," said Alessandro Bruno, a physicist at the University of Bari
in Italy,
who co-authored the study.

The geomagnetic field causes them to spiral around certain corridors
(the geomagnetic field lines), bouncing back and forth between the magnetic
poles as they drift around the Earth, Bruno added in an email to CBC News.

The antiprotons detected by PAMELA are formed by nuclear reactions that
result when cosmic rays from space interact with particles in the Earth's
atmosphere.

Similar to Van Allen radiation belts

The antiproton belt is analogous to the Van Allen radiation belts,
discovered in 1958, which are produced the same way and behave similarly.

"The motion of particles and antiparticles are identical, except
for the fact that they spiral and drift in the opposite direction," Bruno
said.

There are thousands of protons for every antiproton trapped around the
Earth. Nevertheless, the results show that the level of trapped antiprotons in
the belt in the South Atlantic Anomaly — an area above the Atlantic Ocean off
the coast of Brazil — is currently about 1000 times higher than the average in
our galaxy "constituting the most abundant source of antiprotons near the
Earth," the paper said. The South Atlantic
Anomaly is a region where the flow of high-energy particles is particularly
heavy.

Particle levels in the antiproton belt result from a balance between
the antiprotons created by nuclear reactions and those that are destroyed.
Destruction happens when antiprotons are annihilated by contacting matter or
are ionized (altered by a charged particle). Because of all the matter in the
Earth's atmosphere, annihilation happens more at low altitudes.

"Above altitudes of several hundreds of kilometres, the loss rate
is significantly lower, allowing a relatively large supply of antiprotons to be
produced," Bruno said.

The discovery of the antiproton belt confirms previous theoretical
predictions.

Bruno told BBC News that it might one day really provide energy to
spacecraft.

The study was led by Piergiorgio Picozza, a professor with the INFN or
Italian Institute for Nuclear Physics. Dozens of other scientists from Italy, Russia,
Sweden and Germany
contributed to the study, which was funded mainly by INFN and the Italian Space
Agency.

1 comment:

GLsword
said...

For anyone who understands the great depth of knowledge both scientific and humanitarian that went into Star Trek, this is OLD news.

Two issues:

1) Our "model" of the universe is just that. A model. We really do not know that electrons, proton ... even exist. They may simply be the confluence or resonance of several types of waves at a specific space/time point.

2) Assuming the current particle/wave dualities as fact, antimatter is a routine byproduct of the radioactive decay of both natural and man made isotopes.

On earth it is impossible to create the kind vacuum found in space. It has long been presumed that antimatter exists anywhere particle densities are measured in units (ie 1/10/100) per cubic meter and sufficient electromagnetic separation of electrostatics occurs.

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18 years old, having cleaned out my HS library, I concluded the only ambition worth having was becoming a great genius. An inner voice cheered. Yet it is my path I have shared much to the Human Gesalt. Mar 2017 - 4.56 Mil Pg Views, March 2013 - Posted my paper introducing CLOUD COSMOLOGY & NEUTRAL NEUTRINO described as the SPACE TIME PENDULUM. Sep 2010 -My essay titled A NEW METRIC WITH APPLICATIONS TO PHYSICS AND SOLVING CERTAIN HIGHER ORDERED DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS has been published in Physics Essays(AIP) June 2010 quarterly. 40 years ago I took an honors degree in applied mathematics from the University of Waterloo. My interest was Relativity and my last year there saw me complete a 900 level course under Hanno Rund on his work in Relativity. I continued researching new ideas and knowledge since that time and I have prepared a book for publication titled Paradigms Shift. I maintain my blog as a day book and research tool to retain data, record impressions, interpretations and to introduce new insights to readers.